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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473572">shall they lie so tired and worn</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofBoneandIvory/pseuds/LadyofBoneandIvory'>LadyofBoneandIvory</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Historical, American Civil War, F/M, Gentle Kissing, Hurt Ben Solo, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Poe Dameron/Finn, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Near Death, Rey Needs A Hug, Sad with a Happy Ending, Soft Ben Solo, every story should end with a wedding, rey is an ethical and compassionate looter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:27:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,217</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473572</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofBoneandIvory/pseuds/LadyofBoneandIvory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey, a destitute young widow, explores the aftermath of bloody battles to collect the possessions of the dead to sell and to grant mortally wounded soldiers laying on the battlefield a quick death. </p><p>When a grievously injured captain in blue asks her to stay by his side, Rey discovers that she can fall in love in fifteen minutes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>155</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello!</p><p>This story is the result of a plot bunny that popped up right as I was going to bed. I ended up writing it all in one go until the wee early morning hours. It is by no means historically accurate, but I tried to get some of the basics down. </p><p>The title comes from a popular Civil War song on the Union side called <i>Tenting on the Old Camp Ground</i> by Walter Kittridge (1864). Here is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzQxbPk5fu4">a good rendition</a> of it if you're curious.</p><p>Best,<br/>Lady</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In 1864, Rey Plutt was a common name on the lips of gossips in the starving farming towns of South Carolina. Once a beautiful British mail order bride brought over the Atlantic for a wealthy tobacco yeoman in Louisiana, she was now a war widow who travelled alone in her tattered mourning clothes, trailing behind the troops.</p><p>If the nurses were white “angels of mercy,” Rey was a black “angel of death.” She solemnly granted death to the grievously injured soldiers, both blue and grey, on the battlefield in any way they requested. Strangulation, a bullet to the head, or a quick slice of a knife to the throat—it didn’t matter to her. In exchange for her twisted generosity, she took whatever she wanted from their body to sell at market or to her regular clients, whether it be their clothes, keepsakes, weapons, or their teeth.</p><p>As her infamy grew, mothers began to warn their offspring that Rey was also an emaciated witch who stalked children at night and stole their livers to eat on hoecakes. Of course, this claim was preposterous. A lie made up to scare children into returning home before sundown. One, Rey wasn’t a witch. Two, she only collected in the muted early morning light right before sunrise, before soldiers from the victorious side came to recover their dead, bayonet the dying soldiers of their opposition still clinging to consciousness, and bury some others in a mass grave. When possible, Rey preferred to avoid the messy rips that bayonets caused—they took forever to repair by hand and greatly devalued the wool cloth she harvested from a soldier’s round-about jacket or trousers.</p><p>Now, Rey stood at the edge of the battlefield, the crisp fall air nipping at her fingertips. Her heart dropped as she surveyed the expanse of withered tan grass and rocky outcrops in front of her. While the early morning fog still clung low to the ground, it quickly became evident that the rumors were true. The number of dead Billy Yanks in their deep blue garments stained with their own blood vastly outnumbered the dead Johnny Rebels in worn brownish-grey on this field.</p><p>Aside from a small prayer to a God that she wasn’t sure existed anymore, Rey didn’t have too much time to mourn soldiers, most of whom were young, untrained Northerners or Southerners who thought they could make a difference by throwing themselves into the line of fire. She had to act immediately. The three days of mortar shots and gunshots had gradually ceased around midnight and hadn’t restarted. The conflict was over. The other looters would be upon the site by the afternoon when the soldiers had finished their duties, packed up their camps, and left the area to continue their reign of terror elsewhere. If she waited so much as a day, all the good stuff would be gone and the smell of fresh blood and gore would be replaced by the scent of maggoty rot.</p><p>Rey set forth down the hill to be among the bodies. She approached cautiously, peering this way and that especially along the tree line for humans that may be trying to spy of her activities. When she decided that not a single living soul worth worrying about was near, she retracted the pocket knife that she brandished and reaffixed it to her makeshift belt.</p><p>Rey still wore her black mourning dress out to the aftermath of battles, but she had long abandoned the customary veil and gloves that society expected her to wear. They did nothing but get in the way in circumstances like this. On her feet, she wore a particularly small pair of brogans that she took from a short drummer boy who wouldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. He had been blown in half by a cannon, the poor chap.</p><p>The first promising body she came across was a young black soldier dressed in blue laying on his side. A rifle bullet destroyed his neck and exposed yellow fat, muscle and his depressed jugular veins. His open eyes were cloudy and unseeing. He’d been dead for at least several hours—Rey struggled to remove his undamaged round-about jacket due to his rigor mortis but eventually got it off. She felt around in the makeshift pockets and pulled out a small folded piece of paper. It was a reprinted daguerreotype image of a handsome dark-featured man in a dark waistcoat. On the back in smudged ink, it said:</p><p>
  <em>To my Patroclus. From your Achilles—April 1861.</em>
</p><p>Rey leaned over and tucked the photograph into the young man’s waistband. Finding evidence of who these men were in life, whether that be a letter or a photograph of a loved one, immediately soured her enthusiasm to loot their person. She closed his eyelids and gathered his jacket in her arms before setting off to find the next more or less intact body.</p><p>She found three more undamaged blue jackets and two undamaged pairs of pants before she struck gold with a small silver necklace around the neck of a blond soldier in grey. While she giddily tried to close the necklace’s clasp at the nape of her neck, her eyes set upon the body of a man she would never forget.</p><p>The man was tall, long-legged and bareheaded with shaggy overgrown black hair. He laid face down in the muddied grass, but he undoubtedly dressed in the garb of a Northern captain with the double gold bars insignia on his shoulders. From where she stood, the body looked to be in one piece and possibly still in possession of weapons on his person. Rey drew closer and circled the body warily. When she saw his shoulders heave in a shallow breath, her heart squeezed in alarm. She quickly stooped and braced herself to turn the man over, tightening her grip around his bicep. Rey tightened her abs and heaved, pulling him onto his back. He rolled over and pinned down Rey’s skirt with his weight.</p><p>A thin mixture of blood and mud covered his face, but her eyes fixated on the dirty wound which all but flayed open his face and narrowly avoided blinding his left eye.</p><p>
  <em>A sword wound. </em>
</p><p>She pulled out her black mourning handkerchief and pressed it against the endless bleeding.</p><p>The man coughed weakly and peered through his eyelashes up at Rey with his good right eye.</p><p>“Sir, stay still.”</p><p>He made noise of discomfort and pressed his hand against his stomach. His lips moved in an attempt to speak.</p><p>Rey went immediately to his jacket and undid his buttons with nimble fingers. The shirt underneath was soaked with bright red blood. She peeled it up and gasped in horror. A horizontal gash across his pale blood-stained belly opened up his torso and eviscerated him. A large section of pink small intestine poked out of the wound.</p><p>The man moved his hand down and rested it lightly against his crotch with a pained expression. Rey complied and pulled down his wool trousers and drawers. Whoever attacked him with that bladed weapon left two muscle-deep vertical gashes on his upper left thigh and one even deeper diagonal slash on his upper right thigh. A flash of white confirmed to Rey that that cut went to his femur. Two puncture wounds were also present on his thigh near his right knee. The visibly worse cut was to his genitals: the head of his oddly uncut penis hung by a thread of flesh and his testicles were damaged. After examining this wound, she covered it back over with his drawers to preserve his modesty as best she could.</p><p>She looked back into his mangled face, trying to keep a neutral expression as best as she could. He had no more than an hour or two at best left. “Sir…”</p><p>“Ben…I’m Ben.” The labored words came in a voice barely louder than a whisper.</p><p>“Shhh, Ben. Do not speak. I’m—”</p><p>“Rey. Angel Rey. I’ve heard.”</p><p>Rey fumbled for the pocket knife at her belt. “I can end this for you before the other men come back—”</p><p>“No,” Ben feebly shook his head and looked at Rey with wide and desperate hazel eyes. “Just stay.”</p><p>“Stay?”</p><p>“Can’t…feel now. Just stay.”</p><p>Rey hesitated and looked about the battlefield. Nothing but mangled corpses surrounded them. A strong sense of pity flooded her heart. Few deaths are worse than bleeding out alone on the battlefield with such wounds.</p><p>“I will until you’re unconscious.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>Rey went to support gently Ben’s head and stroked his unmarred cheek. If not for his breathing, Rey would have already mistook him for a corpse. His skin was ghostly white and clammy. The moles on his face stood starkly against his pallor.</p><p>With effort, Ben spoke again after a long spell.</p><p>“Story?”</p><p>“Tell a story? About me?”</p><p>“Do not care.”</p><p>“Hm. Well, I was born on the outskirts of London. I worked in my grandfather’s machinery shop until I was seventeen. I miss tinkering with one particular automaton that he owned and could never figure out how to fix it. It was a little girl in a blue skirt who was supposed to write out poems in cursive on her little hand carved writing desk. Of course, this was all before I began exchanging letters with my husband and moved to Louisiana.”</p><p>“…Husband?”</p><p>“My dearly deceased husband. He died a year ago in a mill accident.”</p><p>“My…condolences.” Ben gave another weak cough.</p><p>Rey shrugged. “He was insufferable. I miss his wealth more than him. Everything I inherited burned in a fire that the rebs started,” she sighed. “Are you married?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“That’s a shame. You’re handsome, even like this.”</p><p>Rey saw the smallest grimace of a painful smile from Ben. She smoothed his hair back from his face.</p><p>“If I were eighteen again, you’re the type of man I would try to steal a kiss from.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Yes! I’ve always admired men who resemble the Greek marble statues. I once saw an entire gallery of them in Charleston and stared at their faces for a full two hours.”</p><p>“You…can steal a kiss, still.” The sentence came out as hoarse wheeze as he looked up at her with his good eye.</p><p>Rey raised her eyebrows. “I can?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Would you like me to?”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“Very well, then.” Rey paused in her battle against curbing his head wound’s bleeding. She placed her hands on either side of Ben’s head and lowered her face to him, taking great pains not to lean on him in any capacity.</p><p>She brushed her lips against his and he easily gave away to her curious kisses. They were dry, gentle, and sweet, exactly how she once dreamed that Plutt kissed before she met him. They stayed innocent kisses, and soon Rey began to notice that Ben became less and less physically responsive to her touch.</p><p>“Ben?” Rey gave the fallen soldier one more long, chaste kiss before checking his vitals. No detectable pulse in his neck or breath through his nose. She pried open his good eye and saw that the iris had dulled.</p><p>Rey gave a shaky breath and gently redressed Ben, taking the time to cross his arms across his chest and straighten his legs. As soon as she was finished, she jumped to her feet at the sound of a shout.  </p><p>“You! What are you doing here?! We want no curses from you here.” A distant coarse male voice shot through the air. Rey could see an outline of a greyback on the opposite side of the field with a rifle in hand.</p><p>Rey, with her face and hands now covered in Ben’s blood, hitched up her skirts and <em>ran </em>with the wind on her heels, leaving behind her spoils. She heard a gunshot. A bullet whistled close-by and she strained her legs to go even faster, her bad knee protesting from the exertion. When she reached the tree line, she hobbled towards a small cave close to where she set up camp and squeezed herself inside. She remained there for several hours, but no one sent soldiers to track her down.</p><p>When men’s voices from far away were no more, Rey returned early the next morning to retrieve Ben’s body with the idea to bury it. When it was nowhere to be found, her heart ached at the likely prospect that the greyback who shot at her and his associates defiled his body since he was a captain, perhaps tearing it to shreds or hanging it from a tree. For months after her encounter with Ben, she dreamt of his spirit aimlessly wandering through the wild oak and pine forests of South Carolina with no place to rest his soul.</p><p>***</p><p>Rey travelled north to Pennsylvania two months after President Johnson signed the war ending proclamation in August 1866. She reinvented her entire identity, changing her last name to the safely neutral and anonymous ‘Johnson’ and practicing a carefully crafted New Hampshire accent. She found a mechanic’s position at a small factory that made textile manufacturing machines. After a prolonged and persistent demonstration of her skill and versatility, Klaud O’Sullivan, the owner, hired Rey for equal pay to his male mechanics, much to her surprise and pleasure.</p><p>Rose, one of the factory girls with whom Rey had developed a good comradery with, flounced into the Rey’s corner of the building one late Wednesday afternoon in May 1874 right before Rey was supposed to close up shop for the day. “There’s a customer outside here to pick up a part. Big factory owner around these parts that I don’t feel like dealing with today. Mind processing it?”</p><p>“Mhm.” Rey put down her wrench and stretched. This new garment that Klaud had gifted her (“jeans,” was it?) was incredibly sturdy and rather comfortable. She made her way to the factory storefront and quietly opened and shut the door behind her.  </p><p>“Hello, may I help you?” Rey asked flatly, wiping the black grease off of her fingers with her apron.</p><p>A tall, broad-shouldered man in a narrowly tailored black sack suit stood in the doorway to front of the shop, pouring over a receipt in his hand with a puzzled expression. He looked more like he was going to a fancy society engagement than to the mechanic’s workshop portion of the factory.</p><p>Rey froze and covered her mouth with both hands. The ugly sword wound that nearly blinded him had healed into a thick red line starting at his forehead and disappearing down his neck behind his collar.</p><p>He looked up from his paper and also ceased in his movement, staring at Rey with a bewildered expression. Those were the same striking hazel eyes that dulled on the battlefield in South Carolina.</p><p>“Ben?” Tears blurred Rey’s vision and her true accent resurfaced.</p><p>Ben tried and failed to keep a stiff upper lip. “Rey Plutt?” His healthy voice was a warm tenor to Rey’s ears.</p><p>“W—welcome back. I’ve been waiting you. For a very long time.”  </p><p>“Th…thank you.” Ben, eyes shiny, gave Rey a huge smile and made several steps towards her with a severe limp. “I have too.”</p><p>“How…?”</p><p>“My unit negotiated by my rescue. I barely made it, but…thinking of you kept me here. Even through the infections. A miracle.” He spoke with an endearing Midwestern cadence.</p><p>Rey rushed out from behind the counter and nearly threw herself at Ben, wrapping her arms around his middle and squeezing him with all of her might. Ben crushed her, grease and all, to his chest. A series of shuddering sobs wracked his frame. Rey let her own tears fall onto his crisp jacket.</p><p>“You’ll stay this time?” Rey asked quietly.</p><p>“Yes. I’ll stay.”  </p><p>Their kiss was soft and sweet as the golden hour of the late afternoon shown through the storefront’s tempered window panes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello, </p><p>Because I can’t leave one-shots as one-shots, here’s a definitive happy ending to our story because why the hell not? Again, not historically accurate. Thank you for reading. </p><p>Best,<br/>Lady</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Rose, would you like to attend the World’s Fair in Philadelphia with me this weekend?” Kaydel asked her guest politely after taking a prim sip of tea. Her china teacup was decorated with bamboo stalks of bright white and deep china blue. The entire set was comprised of Bodley pottery, the height of fashion this year. Rose was almost afraid to touch her own cup, let alone drink the expensive sugared green tea out of it.</p><p>After marrying the pomade mogul Giles Akbar, Mrs. Kaydel Connix Akbar quickly rose from a lowly factory girl to an acclaimed hostess at the top of Pennsylvanian society and now dressed the part. She greeted Rose for afternoon tea in a brand new polonaise princess dress of gingham and stripes in shades of blue and white that matched her tea set.</p><p>“Unfortunately, I will be busy this weekend,” Rose responded. She shifted in her yellow gown, feeling three years outdated and a bit ugly while stealing another sugar cookie.</p><p>“That is a pity, with it being the centennial and all this year,” Kaydel sighed and rested her cheek in her hand. “I’ve been trying to find someone who I can stand for more than ten minutes to accompany me for an all-expenses paid trip there. It is difficult, especially now that all of our friends are being wed.”</p><p>Rose felt a pang of grief in the hollow of her chest. She’d loved someone once. Someone she hoped would tell her that he returned the affections of this sailor’s daughter. A boy who would promise to put a ring on her finger, no matter what the law and society said about their union. Instead, he enlisted for the North and disappeared. No matter where she looked and who she asked, she could find no trace of him.</p><p>Kaydel continued her thought after no response from Rose. “What will you be doing instead?”  </p><p>“Rey’s wedding is this weekend.”</p><p>Kaydel nearly spit out her tea. “<em>Our</em> Ms. Rey Johnson is getting married?”</p><p>Rose nodded.</p><p>“To whom?”</p><p>“Benjamin Solo.”</p><p>Kaydel scoffed and put down her teacup. “<em>The </em>Benjamin Solo?”</p><p>“None other.”</p><p>“Giles works with Mr. Solo on a near monthly basis. With him being a bachelor for such a long time, Giles and I thought he was—” she waved the thought away as if to tell Rose to ignore it.</p><p>Rey managed to keep the entire courtship of Benjamin Solo a secret from the entire factory until Rose caught her a year ago. The shamelessly bold woman she was in her jeans, Rose observed Rey sneaking a kiss to the corner of one of their wealthiest customers’ mouth after she helped him procure a tiny mechanical part for an allegedly broken lace-making machine.</p><p>When Rose confronted Rey about it the next day during their lunchbreak, Rey immediately told her everything in confidence: her first marriage, the looting, the mercy killings, and then Ben…and their reunion ten years later. Rose was then sworn to silence about the whole ordeal. Now that Rey was tying the knot with Ben, she gave Rose permission to finally indulge <em>some </em>information to their mutual friends, though it was restricted to her romance with him.</p><p>“Well, apparently at least one woman caught Mr. Solo’s attention. He courted Rey for nearly two years and proposed to her three months ago.” Rose couldn’t conceal a twinkle in her eye.</p><p>“Why <em>Rey?</em>”</p><p>“She reclaimed a great deal of land that was unjustly seized from her during the war. She’s not the starving young woman that she was when we first met her, Kaydel.”</p><p>“I know, I know,” Kaydel sighed in frustration and took to pouring herself a new cup of tea. “Just how is it that I am suddenly now learning about their wedding from <em>you?</em>”</p><p>“They wanted a small ceremony. Rey chose me as her bridesmaid.”</p><p>“Ah. Well, do you think Rey is aware of the rumor?”</p><p>“Of what?”</p><p>“That Mr. Solo can no longer…satisfy a woman due to his war injuries.”</p><p>Rose suppressed a cackle while pretending to chew thoughtfully on a bite of sugar cookie. While drunk off of expensive red wine one evening several months ago, Rey went into sinful detail about Ben’s ability to pleasure a woman with his mouth and how, injured though he may be, was still plenty functional below the belt.</p><p>“She loves him. I am sure they will figure out an arrangement that works for both of them.”</p><p>“Very well. I will send a wedding gift to Mr. Solo’s residence shortly. Please tell future Mrs. Solo that I expect her to come suitably dressed to a society debut party that I will throw for her in August. I have many more questions to ask her.”</p><p>***</p><p>Ben’s mother allowed Ben and Rey to host their lovely wedding in her sweeping rose garden. Maids rushed about to make last minute preparations before the appearance of the fifteen or so guests that the couple chose to witness their union. Rose arrived early and snuck up to the room where Rey told her that she was getting ready.</p><p>She was greeted with a gasp of “Oh, Rose!” as soon as she opened the door to Mrs. Leia Solo’s private parlor. Rey, with her hair already pinned up and veil thrown back, jumped up from where the stately Leia Solo herself was preening over her and rushed over to Rose.</p><p>Rose took Rey’s gloved hands in hers. “Rey, you look positively stunning.”</p><p>“Really?” Rey beamed and twirled around in her Parisian wedding dress of ivory grosgrain straight from <em>Magasin Des Demoiselles</em>, looking like the sheer fashionable envy of Pennsylvanian society. Despite this tiny wedding being the union of an older bachelor and a mysterious widowed mechanic ten years his junior, Ben’s mother insisted that her soon-to-be daughter in law look like a shining diamond in a custom-made dress for the occasion.</p><p>“Absolutely.” Rose again felt plain and unfashionable in the same yellow dress that she wore to all of her fancy occasions.</p><p>“Thank you,” Rey’s joy gave away to a pained smile with shiny eyes. “You look like a dream too.”</p><p>“…What’s wrong?”</p><p>“I wish that my grandfather could be here.” She stiffened her wobbly lip but failed to keep a few tears from falling. “He would be so happy to see me marry a man like Ben. A man that I want to spend the rest of my life with.”</p><p>“I am sure he is looking down from the sky above and blessing us with a clear sky and cool breeze for your big day.”</p><p>“Do you think so?” Rey gave a full bellied laugh and squeezed Rose’s hands in hers. “I guess that is my hope too.”</p><p>***</p><p>The ceremony went on without a hitch. Ben’s unadulterated joy lit up his scarred face as he watched Rey walk down the aisle under the five multicolored arches of fresh roses. He failed to conceal a smile when Rey said her vows to him. When he was told that he could kiss the bride, Ben gathered his new wife in his arms and kissed her passionately and probably for a little too long at a wedding ceremony. Rose would be lying if she didn’t feel a little hot and bothered witnessing this raw display of affection.  </p><p>While newly Mr. and Mrs. Solo greeted and exchanged words with their other guests during the beginning portion of their reception, Rose slipped away for a spell to the balcony to sip on some red wine and study the emerging bright stars in the clear evening sky above. In response to the heat, she removed her gloves to savor the cool wine glass in her hand.</p><p>In mid-sip, she was caught unprepared by a strange man’s voice behind her. “A lovely little ceremony, but not enough bourbon at the reception.”</p><p>Rose managed to swallow but ended up coughing loudly and impolitely when some of the wine managed to get into her nose. She turned and found the brilliantly red-haired and bearded man who stood beside Ben at the ceremony to now be idling up to her with a squat glass of amber liquor in this hand. He wore no gold band on his finger and was dressed lavishly in a deep blue, almost black material.</p><p>“Many pardons, you took me by surprise,” she finally uttered.</p><p>“My apologies for scaring you.” He had striking pale green eyes that she had never seen on a person before.</p><p>“Your apology accepted.”</p><p>“I do not mean to be too forward, but—” the man hesitated to find the right words, “but the band is preparing to play some numbers inside. I was wondering—do you waltz?”</p><p>“I do not know, but I am a quick leaner,” Rose smiled.</p><p>“Would you like to learn?”</p><p>“Only if I have the name of my dancing partner beforehand.”</p><p>“Hux—Armitage Hux, miss.”</p><p>“And I am Rose Tico. Mr. Hux,” Rose sunk into a curtsy, “please grant me the pleasure of your tutelage and partnership for waltzing.”</p><p>“Gladly, Miss Tico. Follow me,” Armitage accepted her offered hand with a flourish and her heart unexpectedly jumped at his ungloved touch against her fingers that she forgot to reglove.</p><p>He pulled her back inside to where Ben and Rey, stark black pressed against warm ivory under the crystal chandelier, were already lost in their own little world on the dance floor.</p>
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